EDA and PCB industries experience growth
The EDA Consortium Market Statistics Service recently released the industry figures for the first quarter of 2012.
The report found that both the electronics design automation (EDA) and printed circuit boards (PCB) industries experienced notable growth in this period across the board.
EDA
According to the EDA Consortium report, total revenue for the EDA industry reached $1.53 billion in the first quarter of 2012. This represents a 6.3 percent rise from the first quarter of 2011, when market revenue stood at $1.44 billion.
While revenue for the EDA industry in the fourth quarter of 2011 was 9.6 percent higher than the first quarter of 2012, the industry's revenue rose 13.4 percent year-over-year. Of the various products within the umbrella of EDA, computer-aided engineering (CAE) was the most prosperous, experiencing revenue of $564.8 million, a 6.5 percent increase over the first quarter of 2011.
The total number of professionals working for EDA companies was 27,848 in the first quarter of this year, up 5.3 percent from the same period in 2011.
PCBs
The EDA Consortium Market Statistics Service report also found growth among the printed circuit board and multi-chip module industry in the first quarter of 2012. The industry enjoyed revenue of $147.5 million, a 5.1 percent increase from 2011's first quarter. The last 12 months saw a moving average increase of 3.9 percent.
According to the recent ICP report on PCB sales and shipments in May 2012, revenue is likely to continue to grow, Electronics Manufacture & Test WorldWide reported. The book-to-bill ratio was 1.02 for rigid PCBs and 1.17 for flexible circuits. It was the sixth month in a row in which these ratios were above 1.00, indicating increasing demand in the industry.